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Really Keynes was not wrong. You have to read Keynes in context.
Context is very important to understand things.
Not the same society in which he lived Keynes, that current society.
In that society still existed ethical principles, it made sense to Keynes that could happen in the future as cited by the author.
The problem is that greed has changed everything and Keynes had no greed among the variables to consider.

One of my most favorite article on education. I think the core question of this article is this: why education matters? I found an astonishing connection with the following speech of Rory Stewart on the question of why democracy matters: "The point about democracy is not instrumental. It's not about the things that it brings. The point about democracy is not that it delivers legitimate, effective, prosperous rule of law. It's not that it guarantees peace with itself or with its neighbors. The point about democracy is intrinsic. Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality and an idea of liberty. It reflects an idea of dignity, the dignity of the individual, the idea that each individual should have an equal vote, an equal say, in the formation of their government."

Testify! You mean there CAN be other metrics by which we can measure the quality of modern life other than the economic? I hope that Derek Bok's thoughts are a sign of the pendulum swinging away from the dry, dry economic rationalism of the last thirty years. The people who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, have eviscerated education and crippled science with no idea how much poorer it has left our society. They would no doubt view the current mess as efficient and productive.

Nicholes Taleb brought this topic in his last book, "Anti-Fragile", that the connection of education and economic growth is intuitively construed as the former driving the latter, while in reality it is just that more wealth makes more education (higher) happen. The jury could be out there, but Derek is raising a fundamentally different point that those who would pursue higher education must do so with the objectives that need not be based on furthering economic prospects for themselves; given where the costs of higher education is headed, and where markets are missing, one would not blame anyone for choosing to do what they have been forced to choose. Perhaps an individual's choice in this case is not even remotely connected to the choice of the society and the public good that it could have helped to augur; the absence of market mechanism has brought higher education to that social construct where the delivery mechanism fails.